فصلنامه انتظار موعود
سال پانزدهم شماره 49 (تابستان 1394)

One of the most fundamental religious beliefs of Shia is the belief in the return of the luminous spirits of the Imams of the Guidance to their natural bodies in the world and before the resurrection, which is interpreted as the “Return”. The reality of the Return has been explained and proven by the scholars in the intellectual and narrative areas. Of the many intellectual and narrative reasons not only is the possibility of the Return understood, but also we are ensured about its occurrence. It should be known that based on the assertion of some scholars, one of the Shia beliefs is the coming back of the souls of a group of the Shi’tes and a group of Imam Mahdi’s enemies after their separation from the body, but our purpose of “Return” in this paper is regarding the return of the souls of the Imamate of the Guidance who are the Divine ending representatives; because they have the executorship ending; as it is the same for the Prophet of Islam. The issue of the Return is analyzed and proved in the rational area and its result is not just the possibility of Return’s occurrence, rather it is the necessity of its occurrence.

The “appearance era” is the era of crystallization of human talents; when the reality of humans will find an opportunity to appear. Shia tradition sources have spoken about an exceptional event in the appearance era which can be the origin and the foundation of human talent shining. The focus and the development of intellect will be an important event in the appearance era. The how of this phenomenon is itself the subject of an independent research which has been investigated by the writer in another article. The important question which we seek to answer now is to clarify the affected areas by the development of the intellect. In other words, when the intellect is completed, in what dimensions the effects of this evolution will show itself.
According to this research, in the field of gnostic knowledge, people achieve the knowledge like self-examination, theism, and theology. In the moral and value aspects, people are adorned with the values such as worship, justice, and avoidance of sin. The result of the development of instrumental rationality is a great change in the areas such as economics, management, politics, security, and taking advantage of the nature.

There are three theories in relation to the presence of the religions at the appearance era and the time of Imam Mahdi’s global governance: 1. Proof theory, 2. Negation theory, 3. Consolidated theory. In the proof theory, the existence of the people of the Scripture is proved and in the negation theory, their non-existence is proved. And in the consolidated theory, the existence of the people of the Scripture at the time of appearance and their non-existence at the time of the global governance is discussed. In this article, among the three mentioned theories, only the proof theory is considered and its result which is the diversity of religions and the existence of Christianity and Judaism at the time of appearance and global governance is proved. The owners of this theory have resorted to several rational and narrative reasons to prove their claim, such as resorting to Qur’anic verses which justify the issue under discussion with a general and specific approach. The content of the general verses verifies the freedom and free will for the human and rejects the compulsion and obstruction in the matters of belief. And the certain verses explicitly emphasize the existence of Christianity and Judaism and their followers until the Day of Resurrection. Moreover, among the presented reasons in this regard, there are the rational reasons such as “human freedom” and the principle of “task-centering” in this world, the two principles which accompany the human for good. The other reason is the idea of consistency of the Prophet’s biography with Imam Mahdi’s biography and the necessity of this consistency is Imam Mahdi’s perfect behavior with the people of Scripture, and this perfect behavior demands for the acceptance of the Christians and Jews as the religious minorities in the Global Governance of Imam Mahdi.

The current research tries to show that the tradition of waiting for the Promised Savior has existed in the Zoroastrian religion and the religion’s texts have spoken about three Saviors. Also, we can match up the three Promised Saviors respectively to the Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and the Apocalypse Savior in all Divine religions. In the case of the first two Promised Saviors, there are quotes and assertions from the Zoroaster himself in the Muslim history; but about the third Savior, the term “Astadriekā” meaning “the scholarly man” has been used which the Muslim scholars have not engaged in determining its examples in the history of this religion in the investigative books written about Saoshyants in Zoroastrian religion and it can be either due to the inattention of the Muslim historians; or they have considered the concept of the future Promised as a myth without any instance. According to this paper, the idea of the Promised Savior was a well-known thought at the time of Zoroaster and according to the people’s knowledge of the concept of savior, Zoroaster has confirmed the appearance of three of them that based on some historical texts (written) after the (advent of) Islam, the first Saoshyant matches Jesus Christ. The second one matches the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the third one is compared to the Imam of the Time. As such, the result is in the Zoroastrian religion like other divine religions only one Promised Savior is considered to appear.

The treasure house of Shia traditions is replete with traditions which depict the apocalyptic events. These narrations, which are referred to as the appearance-foretelling traditions, have been noticed by the deviant sects and groups. These groups have taken full advantage of these traditions by trying to adapt the traditions on their claims from the position of the traditions in the intellectual framework of Muslims in attracting the masses and convincing the sects. The tradition of “Mufaddal ibn ‘Umar” is among the traditions used in annunciating the appearance of Ali Muhammad Bāb as the promised Messiah in Islam and the concluding part of this religion. This article has examined this claim with a descriptive-analytic method. By examining the content and the document of this tradition and its obvious weakness in proving the Imamate and examination of its numerous quotes, the invalidity of Bahā’ie claim based on this tradition becomes clear.

“Ali Muhammad Shirāzi” is one of the claimants of Bābism and Mahdism who speaks about the abolition of Islam, revelation of a new book, and his own divinity and demonstrates as such that his religion is novel and new; however, based on the available evidences, he has taken the adherents of “Hurufism” and “Nugtavi” as a model in many of his claims. This article by reviewing the Messianic claims, the abolition of Islam, book revelation and the divinity of Bābi leaders, we review the history of such claims and make this clear to the audience that such claims have been recorded in the works of Hurufism and Nuqtavi leaders and in fact, the seemingly new claim of Bābi leaders is the retelling of the old words of these two adherents while these two currents have existed centuries before the Bābies.